A Valentine For Leafa
by Fictioneer
Summary: Two valentines for the same girl - or is she? A Valentine's Day offering of SAO's unofficial hottest pairing; knightly Kirito and looker Leafa. A different mellower take from my other stories. Story Art in the works. Please leave reviews!


**A Valentine for Leafa**

By Fictionaeer

(An original piece in homage to Sword Art Online characters created by Reki Kawahara)

"Tra-la!"

Suguha sauntered to our kitchen table holding a napkin-covered dish and set on the table next our tuna bagel lunch.

"Do the honor, Onii-chan!"

"Honors?"

I really wasn't into ceremony, even commercialized celebrations, but I have to oblige and amuse my little (even at a lanky dewy seventeen) sister. So it was a little grudging for this particular day that I dutifully lifted the peak of the napkin off a big chocolate heart trimmed with whipped cream lace which also formed in cursive script -

"For my favorite Onii-chan!" Suguha chimed as though I couldn't read.

"You mean your _**only**_ Onii-chan!" I chaffed, looking for any jest to hide behind the cloy silly sentimentality of the occasion – and something related unmentioned and hopefully left buried. "Uh, nice, Sugu. Really nice! Uh, aren't you supposed to deliver it in a bag?"

Like most guys get delivered them.

"We'll be a little more western this year!" my imouto gibed, sitting across from me, elbows on the table and palms cradling her cheeks looking too cute, perilously softening her tomboy visage.

"Uh, it's nice. Looks delicious too."

"Not only is the chocolate completely homemade but so is the whipped cream and and red bean jelly filler!"

"You really pulled out all the stops, Sugu. Er, same as Recon's?" I demurred to her soft smirk.

"Don't worry, he got an e-card."

"That was sweet," I quipped, and with a pert head toss she broke out into a near leaning grin.

"I really tried my best to make this for you, Onii-chan, since you've been in such a deep funk over falling out with Asuna-san. I'm so sorry."

Why do I have the feeling she's not all THAT sorry? Wait, that's not fair. Suguha's gone through a lot these last few years. Most other girls would need a shrink to get over the emotional double whammies she's had.

I swallowed the tartness welling my guy at this left-field mention and shrugged. "Well, like they say, young love's immortal till it grows up."

"You're taking it admirably well, Onii-chan."

"It's not like I'm looking for a medal in misery, Sugu," I said, trying to keep my displeasure of Asuna being mentioned.

"Take a bite, Onii-chan!"

"Uh, now?"

Suguha's fingertips broke off a corner of the heart and reached over to my face. Pausing, I plucked it to shy her expectation of my lapping it off like a puppy, but was left surprised and contrite by my first nibble. "Mmm! Very good, Sugu! Better than the stores - a lot."

"Thank you, Onii-chan. You're special to me."

"Uh, well, you're special to me too."

"That's what happens when you give someone a chance to show how much they care about you," Sugu said in an odd hinting way

"Huh, I never doubted that from you, Sugu. I just feel – overwhelmed making all your school admirers jealous."

She waved that off. "Then none of them are a genuine national hero!"

"Or has a gushing groupie at their dining table," I chaffed and Suguha lightly chuckled before I turned a little sober. "But really, Sugu. A lot of people who aren't here getting treats like this anymore helped me make it far enough to make a fluke win."

Suguha's smile drooped a moment from my gentle admonition then perked if with coy resolve.

"Of course I never forget them, Onii-chan. I often dropped by to say hello to survivors at your school to help boost their morale telling them how well you're coming at home, remember?"

"Uh, just how much were you telling them, Sugu?"

Suguha tittered; "Don't worry, Onii-chan! All your secrets are safe with me!"

"Er, why would you have them?"

"Well, some can't be helped having since we share the same bath and kitchen, right?"

"Uggg..."

"Besides, now's the perfect time for you to make true a promise you gave me."

"Promise? What kind of promise?" I asked and the most unsettling of coy smiles faced me.

"No, not here, Onii-chan. Not us."

"Not 'us'? What do you mean?"

"I mean I want nothing to change between us here. Nothing that would make you feel uncomfortable about our sibling rapport."

"Uh, Sugu, what's this about?" I asked and she coyly hopped up on long sleek legginess.

"See you at the Aarun Golden Roots Inn, logging quarters," she said, skipping off down the hall.

"Uh? Mean the sleeping quarters? Hey!"

Damn! What's she up to? Suguha's face looked very uncharacteristically like a sly fox. Somehow the valentine seemed to grin impishly up at me.

What kind of promise?

After five minutes of nibbling bagel and mulling her tease, I rose to my room, pausing outside Suguha's door to notice it was slightly agape, like she was too excited logging in slam her door shut, and on impulse I peeped in to check if she was alright to see her already flat on her bed with AmuSphere in place, her tits making sharp peaks on her hilly tee-shirt. That'd be an embarrassing brotherly observation under normal conditions, but it was also an indicator that Leafa was waiting for me on the other side with almost erotic anticipation, like for the duet quests she often coaxed me into taking. I tired hard not to think of any sly agenda she had.

What's she up to?

After pausing in hesitation on my bed I donned my AmuSphere and laid back and uttered "Start Link!" and my room vanished in a rainbow vortex sucking all sensations in after it like a black hole spitting me out on the other side and suddenly the brief rainbow daze broke and I was in a quiet round spartan room with several plain beds - a cheap Aarun log-out log-in inn, which was all Leafa and I could afford since emerging from the Underworld over a year ago where I claimed Excalibur.

And alone, perched the foot of one bed was the sunny-blond pony-tailed emerald-eyed sylph Leafa.

I found myself mentally shifting gears, making a conscious effort to equate this beauty with someone another universe and a thin wood wall away. She beamed at my sight.

"Come sit by me, Kirito-kun!" she chimed, slim hand patting the bed next to her but I quietly and warily sat just beyond that space.

"Uh, so why meet here?" I asked somewhat apprehensively. She smiled and looked around as though looking for tiny details in the room.

"Don't you remember, Kirito-kun? It was on this very bed where we sat together and I cried my heart out on your shoulder after visiting the hospital with Kazuto-kun and seeing the pain on his face holding Asuna-san's hand. I knew that you could never be so close to me."

Uneasily I warily nodded. "Uh, yea...you were - having a hard time getting it together."

"I was in such pain that the truth was hammering in my throat to gush out t anyone who could hear my heart. Even to Kirito-kun, just a stranger then. It was the first time I admitted to myself I lost Kazuto-kun forever - and almost cried it out all to you but I couldn't. Even in my despair and anguish, I was still heeding the rules at bringing problems here from the real world, right?"

"Uh, yea..."

"I thought - this feeling must never pass my lips. These forbidden feelings must be locked very deep in my chest. So that someday it would be forgotten."

"Er, Sugu -"

"Even if we were really cousins, we were raised as big brother and sister. If I showed my emotions, Kazuto-kun, father, and mother would all be confused and troubled. More importantly, the only one in Kazuto-kun's heart is that beautiful person. Was..."

She hinting Asuna?

"Uh, Sugu, why are you - going back to that? Isn't it painful remembering?"

She paused if mulling, nodded. "That's what makes it worthwhile, Kirito-kun.." Her emerald eyes met mine. "I chose here because - I want to close a circle."

"Circle?"

"High in the night skies above us a few years ago you made a promise to me."

"Uh, promise - again?"

"Yes. You promised that once things were made right that you'd give me a chance."

"'Chance'?"

"To accept me in your heart."

"Oh-Oh..."

"Uh, I always have, Sugu."

"Please, Kirito-kun - say 'Leafa' here thereafter, okay?"

"Uh, I guess...but, I always had a place for Su – you."

"I mean that special place in your heart that's suddenly empty now."

Boom!

Just like that.

As subtle as a brick.

Damn!

"Sugu..." I wasn't sure just how to broach this all too sensitive and embarrassing subject. " I - I thought you - you got over all that, right?"

"Feelings and memories aren't lamps to switch on and off, Kirito-kun!" Leafa gently chided. "There's always a glow left that no one else can ever see."

"But you've been alright since – that time, like 'it' didn't happen."

That was kind of a lie because since Suguha had that brutal truth expose episode twp year ago, she'd been leaking subtle coy suggestions under sisterly over concerns and teasing affection which I feigned blindness to, so I half-anticipated her retort;

"How can I get over not thinking aboit every day, Kirito-kun? How can I help not being reminded every day across the table or in the hall or at kendo?"

"Sugu, it's – not really healthy to hold on to feelings like that."

"So you're going back on your promise?" she said with a tinge of dismay and faint bitterness.

I have to end this - break this now. I was kind of glad I was front Leafa's alien face to do it.

"Sugu - brothers don't hit on their sisters," I stated evenly without trying to sound cold jarring her to her senses. She lightly blinked then a soft recovering smile.

"I'm not asking you to, Kirito-kun. As I never have," Leafa replied so serenely and sincerely, so seeming innocent of her double judo slamming me. Suguha never directly chased me with her affections like oversexed siscons in anime or openly fawned me like dewy-eyed puppy. I couldn't knock her tact and self-control, though she sounded like putting cheese in a mousetrap wiped your hands clean of a rodent's direct demise.

"Geeze, Sugu – "

"Leafa!"

"- You know what I mean!"

"Kirito-jun, I totally accept that you don't hold anything past brotherly feelings for your sister back home. It is proper and honorable, and it's wrong of me to press that."

"Huh?" This a trick?

"Then – why are you opening old wounds?"

"Because your quandary disappears when you accept that your sister's back in the real world, not here."

"Oh? How you come to that?"

"Because I'm a different person here, Kirito-kun."

"Just because Cardinal tweaks our perceptions and egos a little for max enjoyment?"

"It's more than that, Kirito-kun." she paused then tossed her ponytail back and cocked her head to look oddly coy-cute like a glamor model pose. "Am I prettier now?"

I nearly sputtered. "What - What kind of -"

"No, don't think - let your impulse answer!"

I didn't but still it was pointless to fib. "Uh, yes. I mean, yes, you're pretty -"

"Than Sugu?"

I gnashed my lip. "That's – a crazy comparison!"

"Don't be afraid of bruising my feelings, Kirito-kun. I wouldn't ask it to hurt myself. Klein came out and said I was when I asked."

I smirked. "Oh, Klein did, uh? Good thing your age still puts you off-limits!"

"Still, he was honest and forthwith admitting it from a man's gut."

"His guts had nothing to do with it."

"Now leave him be, Kirito-kun! This issue's between us! Now answer!"

I sighed. "Since I'm spoiled and blinded by Sugu's familiarity, it appeals to me differently even as a brother when I look at attractive girls, and I think of Leafa the same way."

A coy beam lit Leafa's face. "So there're nothing reminding you of her in me, true?"

"Huh?" Was this a trap? But she was right about that. Unless Leafa opened her mouth and uttered things only known between us there was no way I'd guess she was in fact homely half-tomboy Suguha by looks, behavioral enhancements. That was Leafa's fatal attraction for me and to a measure, far more gamers than I can imagine.

"But I _**know**_ your truth - that's the difference, Leafa - Sugu," I hastily pressed.

"But if you didn't know before Asuna-san, where would Leafa be in your heart, Kirito-kun?"

"I – I can't say how - nobody can."

"True - unless given a chance. Another chance."

"Sugu - "

"This world is a great level playing field, Kirito-kun! People are here simulating their real-world lives, having life dress rehearsals, even extending and living their natural lives here like Yuuki. The real-world is but a launchpad, not the spaceship taking you other worlds to explore and live."

With tingly apprehension I asked, "You're – Sugu's – not planning that, are you?"

"Nothing that extreme - but I still want that fair chance, Kirito-kun. As promised during a moonlight waltz in the clouds."

I mulled this. "And - what if - if -"

"Your eyes will tell me if you're sincere, and if your heart truly doesn't beat to the same song I'll gracefully admit defeat and Leafa will be no more."

"Wait - you wouldn't do that?"

Leafa shrugged, "For what reason would I have continuing here? Your sister will reapply herself to being a champion bookworm and kendo student and maybe - maybe be salvaged by a worthy but lesser mirror of yours."

"But Leafa's got friends here - she's a social icon!"

"But what does your sister lose - and I?" she balked with a too cute pout.

I mulled this. "Sugu -"

"Leafa!"

" - Do you really believe you can divorce yourself from your IRL truth?"

"If you're asking whether Suguha can continue as the sister you've always known apart me, yes."

"That sounds hard to believe. You can't just - quarantine your personality off from your real world self like that!"

"Actors that do method acting do that all the time. It shouldn't be that different coming here, and I'll flower here in ways Suguha can't in a regulated world. You'll know me as someone apart."

"That's – impossible." I hoped. I sincerely hoped on so many levels. Yet, there was something almost mystically enchanting in her proposal and passion. "You can't split personality yourself that deep, Sugu! All you can do is play-role in this world, not branch off a parallel self!"

"Then at least give me the chance to fail, Kirito-kun!"

I paused. If she succeeded I wasn't sure just how aloof I could be, especially when the one anchor of my life had walked off my stage. "You're - asking me to - forget I'm your brother here."

"I'm asking you accept me - Leafa - as a totally separate big girl and to let go of sentiments and ties that are irrelevant here."

"Damn, Sugu, you really got it bad!"

"Yes, I do," she said, unrepentant. "I'm a woman in love. A cousin in love. That's not all that unusual."

"Raised as my sister."

"Technically not."

"Su – Leafa, what makes you think we even have a basis for any kind of – of 'romance' being we're so damn familiar with another?"

"That hasn't stopped the boy-marries-the-girl-next-door syndrome."

"Cute - only I never heard of boy-marries-girl-in-next-room - but that's jumping way over the top over our present situation, right?"

She lightly shrugged. "Anything can happen."

"Cute."

"All I'm asking is to settle whether I win or lose with you as the man and woman we are, Kirito-kun. I can live in peace with either outcome. I need to know whether there's at least a spark of interest in you in me - this me - like other men here following me with their eyes too."

Damn, she's challenging my masculinity now? But she's adept as a rapier putting that on this stage.

"That's not fair, Leafa. You're - your avatar's a looker and a half. I wouldn't be a red-blooded guy if I didn't - didn't -"

"'Notice' me once a while?" she demurely said and I sheepishly had to chuckle at that oddly shameless incontestable fact.

"Well, sometimes - I do forget who you really are - and who can blame me? Even Agil and Klein constantly have to remind themselves – Klein because I'd kill him, but you want me to willingly diss your truth for some - fantasy romance that most little girls have for daddy?"

"I don't want a crush romance, Kirito-kun. A hidden one, a secret one, perhaps, but not fake."

"It doesn't bother you that we're sibs?"

"VR frees the truth, Kirito-kun. No laws, no religions, no taboos, no hang-ups, no superstitions to cripple our desires and imaginations. All without staining our souls and mores in the real world!"

"You're a great VRMMO pitchwoman, Leafa. Though I hardly think my being Sugu's bro's a 'hang'."

She gently grasped my arm to draw her face close. "Are you my brother here and now, Kirito-kun?" she crisply challenged, big emerald eyes boring into mine with their foreign mystique.

It should be easy to say 'yes,' but there was no hint of Suguha here to grapple for recognition or denial or rejection. If Leafa simply stopped talking anything about Suguha's life, how long would it be before I simply forgot she was? In VRMMOs, Leafa and I were unrelated entities as went the house rules of severing all ties with real-life and the real-world. To say I was Leafa's brother here more than clashed the spirit and theme of the game and this universe.

"Asking me to dump reality," I muttered in muddled doubt and denial.

"I'm just asking you to pretend, Kirito-kun. What is wrong with just pretending? This whole universe just pretend."

"You're confusing me, Leafa. First you say you don't want to fake it and now you're asking to pretend!" I chaffed before truth dawned in reading the coy wistful hope on her face. "Oh, I get it. You're hoping that I'll evolve feelings past just 'pretend,' right?"

"Can't blame a girl for trying."

"Yea, you're subtle as a brick. Cardinal must be working overtime tweaking your persona because Sugu would never be that sly."

"Then I'm a warrior here, yes?"

"'All's fair', huh? Your game doesn't work if I don't play."

"Like you've never ever dreamt or fantasized being 'with' Leafa, Kirito-kun?"

I blushed. For once she seemed as seductively coy as Asuna could be. "Still throwing bricks."

"Well, you claimed you were a 'red-blooded' male! Kirito-kun, if not love, then try it as a lark!"

I winced and gathered my wits. "I – I think you're wishing too hard, Sugu."

"Still, aren't you the least curious, Kirito-kun? Treating Leafa like different a person for fun and questing? How it would've been after rescuing me from those nasty goons had we met without your rescue mission?"

I was about to snicker at her damsel-in-distress ploy to pump my hero ego and manhood, but I have to wonder; like most guys in VR I can't deny the primal tickle in my lions whenever I saw Leafa. On face value Leafa was a catch for any guy. I recalled the impulse feelings I had at my first meeting with her in the neutral forest and in Sylvian that were overshadowed by my concern for Asuna, and I thought we could get along very nicely hadn't I already been attached. It was like an uncompleted fantasy to imagine what would've been - but she was offering me that chance in a completely innocent game of pretend without real-world damnation and ridicule, and the best thing was Leafa would have no trouble not reminding me of Suguha.

Even Liz and Philia coyly teased me of such a fanciful situation in the Lost Song event.

I cleared my throat, "Uh, besides, even if I 'evolved' those feelings, how would the others take it?"

"No one knows us in Selvo Village. That's in a whole other game. We can play our chance there on the sly," she suggested but I hesitated. "Or are you so unable to leave qualms behind, Kirito-kun?"

"Stop pushing!" I chided, still, her proposal was intriguing as hell.

Leafa was a looker cordoned off from my normal male reactions by guilt chains from another world, but what if I were unshackled by the excuse of stainless pretending. To open feel and react as any man would to Leafa's charms as a wholly different stranger? Plus there was that unspoken forbidden spice of that at least once in lifetime wild damning wonder most every brother's had of a pretty sister...

But was I alone so off the wall? Are there other siblings here playing this game? Statistics say there must be - and of those, are there close and normal brothers and sisters playing dangerous teasing games together behind the blinds of avatars? So saying, did sibling familiarity have a shelf-life in VR the longer one lived and developed their alter-ego here? Could situations evolve like demure maiden big-sister slowly falling for gallant knight little brother? It sounds crazy, but life teaches us that such is never too crazy. Leafa was playing chicken with me over a coy harmless game and I was flinching.

"I - still can't forget I'm your bro' IRL," I defensively said even though that hoisted flag was starting to feel lame here. Even a spoilsport. The whole point of VRMMOs was leaving the real world - and self - at home. If Leafa wanted me to pose as her - 'boyfriend' - as a lark, and she reminded you not a wilt of your sib IRL, on what grounds would I have dumping a titillating adventure that didn't affect our lives in the real world? I mean I was in control and there was no way I was going to let Sugu's crush slyly move on me under Leafa's mask.

But then, was it wise to risk forgetting Leafa was really Sugu altogether?

Leafa teased; "It's not like you're taking your sister to the prom, Kirito-kun!"

"No, this is worst." I muttered. "In the real word nothing should ever come of that situation past a weird night out, but this 'chance' thing's like – like a minefield."

"But you're curious too, Kirito-kun, aren't you?"

Damn her twin intuition!

"Look, Leafa; the only reason I'd ever do this for kicks is because you look and sound squat like Sugu, that's the only reason I'd ever go along a crazy idea like this!" I sternly asserted.

"So you will?" she almost coyly needled like hope and I sighed.

It's not love, just kicks, guy. There's no harm or foul just playing along hanging with Leafa on a new different level and getting jealous ogling from guys in VRMMOs where our truth was unknown. Just as long I remember who's really behind those pretty eyes. Just think of it as a – therapeutic thrill for her, stroking her crazy crush away!

Yea, that's legit enough excuse.

I paused. "Look...I don't want to break your heart again in case this – doesn't work out as you hope, Sugu -" Her finger pressed my lip, eyes limpid.

"I'm the best ally you'll ever have in this life - or any other, no matter what, Kirito-kun."

Somewhat grudgingly and gratuitously I nodded. "Yea, you probably would've died a dozen times in SAO helping me, so I guess I owe you that. And I have to admit one thing, that Sugu's never chased me like a drooling groupie or even any hint of it before SAO. Just sucked in all her misery..."

I soberly, ruefully pondered then sighed. "If I can – help Sugu finally get over this weird infatuation for good, I'll go as long as it takes to make her tired of me," I said and there was a "YAA!" printed on her face that I frowned back. "But no hanky-panky 'hind my promise, got it, Leafa? I'll play along with you to help purge Sugu's crush with boredom and disappointment, but we're not gonna cuddle or snuggle or nuzzle or anything like that for a long time - if ever! Also, I don't want to hear squat of anything Sugu from you – and I don't want to see Sugu so much as peep anything about this IRL, got it? I don't need to sit across the dining table from my innocent sister with her chatting about us like a wet dream, got it?"

"Kazuto-kun can still look at himself in the mirror every morning."

I snorted. "Uh. You've a very un-Sugu sense of smug humor, Leafa."

"But as always you love the danger - any danger, don't you, Kirito-kun?"

"Your kind of 'danger' I don't need," I quipped with a sigh of anticipation, yet felt assured Suguha would live up to not showing any signs of this meeting or issue back home. It might seem weird that we'd keep such a VR pretend-affair silent to ourselves IRL over the dining table, but being a deal it oddly enough shouldn't feel funny or any different only listening to her banter school stuff at breakfast.

Besides, I was intrigued to see if it was really possible for Leafa to indeed evolve beyond Suguha's strings.

"Man, it feels like I've been strong-armed into paying the national debt!"

"True love doesn't come cheap, Kirito-kun!" Leafa tittered like soft bell-chimes, leaning to rest her lovely alien blond head against my startled tingling shoulder. "From both of us, thank you for this valentine."

FIN


End file.
